Description

I am a palliative physician and artists who collects art in all its forms – pictures, words, sound, abstract – that explore sex, gender, death, native cultures and end of life rituals.

“Orikalankini” – Kalank in hindi means ‘stain’, Kalankini is the one who stains, “O ri” is used when someone calls out to a woman in rural India. Orikalankini is thus a call to the sexually liberated, opinionated and women who are free in their minds and bodies – with Hijab or not, with Bangales or not, with Sindoor or not.

Kalank or the stain is both literal and metaphorical, women in India has many job titles and the most important of them all is that of the upholder of the family’s honour – first of her fathers household then that of her father in law’s.

The honour of the family rests at the level her dupatta sits on her breasts, in the volume of her laughter, on the number of bikes she sits on as a pillion rider, the number of relationships she has and of course in her vagina!

This is for all the women who step out of the boundaries placed by everyone under the sun, even herself and become Kalankini, women who are so immersed in themselves that they don’t notice the boundaries for there are really none.

Stayingwiththesilences is a blog that is interested to collect anything around death, concepts around it, expression of it, ancestors, afterlife, occupations that deal with the dead and dying.